Biological and Physical Anthropology Commons^™

Sociocultural And Environmental Changes And Their Biological Impact On Nonelite Polish Individuals, Paige A. Lynch

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation integrates isotopic, biodistance, and skeletal stress data from cemeteries, Gać and Pień to study health and survival in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC). The PLC (16th–18th centuries) in Poland was marked by religious migration, social inequality, and environmental change. Chapter 2 used a multiproxy approach to identify migrant status: most at Pień were local, about half at Gać were migrants, often biologically related to locals. Chapter 3 used stable isotope analyses to find minimal sex-based dietary differences, except for Pień females’ higher millet intake, and showed that market access and feudal systems influenced subsistence strategies. Chapter 4’s survival analyses …

Does Reliance On Kin Erode With Market Integration? A Social Network Perspective, Ruizhe Liu

Anthropology ETDs

Kinship has long shaped human societies. Yet globalization and market integration (MI) are reshaping social structures. This dissertation investigates how kinship-based networks persist, adapt, or erode amid rapid socioeconomic change. It draws on ethnographic and social network data from 229 Mosuo households in southwest China, a matrilineal society experiencing increasing MI, to examine shifts in everyday cooperation.

The first study analyzes fixed name-generator data and finds a general decline in kin support as MI increases, though with considerable variation. The second study uses count models to explore unbounded support networks, showing that kin ties remain central in reproductive contexts, while …

Social Tolerance, Cooperation, And Constraint Shape Differentiated Social Relationships In Female Chimpanzees, Stephanie A. Fox

Anthropology ETDs

In this dissertation, I investigate variables that promote and constrain female-female social relationships in chimpanzees, a species where females disperse at sexual maturity, reside primarily among non-kin as adults, and where fission fusion social structure can reveal how female social behavior responds to different social contexts. I conducted my research using a combination of detailed behavioural data that I collected during a one-year field season (2019-2020) and long-term data (2010-2019) collected by the Kibale Chimpanzee Project. I show that female chimpanzees form stable, differentiated social relationships, which reflect active preferences and variation in social tolerance (Chapter 2); females leverage these …

Behavioral Strategies Of Social Relationship Formation And Competition Among Adolescent And Adult Male Chimpanzees At Kanyawara, Kibale National Park, Uganda, Drew K. Enigk

Anthropology ETDs

Adolescence is a unique life stage in which individuals are reproductively mature but have not yet attained their full adult body size. In chimpanzees, which live in multimale-multifemale groups, this age period presents a challenge for males. Namely, adolescent males lack the physical strength to compete effectively with adult males for mating opportunities. In the following chapters, we seek to answer whether adolescent male chimpanzees exhibit behavior typical of highly competitive adults but with less success, or whether they pursue alternative behavioral tactics to largely avoid competition until they are fully grown. We utilize both long-term data spanning over two …

Energetic Tradeoffs, Infection, And Immunity In Wild Chimpanzees Of Uganda And Tanzania, Sarah Renee Phillips

Anthropology ETDs

Infectious disease is a primary source of mortality for most mammal species, but scientists have little understanding of factors driving variation in infection and immunity between individuals, populations, and species in the wild. Life history theory provides an evolutionary framework for delineating distribution of available energy to competing physiological demands, including growth, reproduction, and maintenance. Early life reproduction should be favored over late life survival, but, in long-lived species, reproductive success is strongly tied to survival to old age. Slower pace of reproduction could allow investment in immunity, reducing risk of morbidity and mortality to infectious disease. Additionally, several host …

Trade-Offs In Growth And Development: A Life History Approach, Anna Medendorp Rautman

Anthropology ETDs

Life history theory (LHT) is the conceptualization of tradeoffs in resources allocation. Plasticity, the ability of phenotypes to vary in response to environmental cues, is integral to LHT. Prior to completed maturation, resources are distributed towards maintenance or somatic maturation, a combination of growth and development (G&D). This dissertation presents an examination of intragroup variation in the G&D of the dental and skeletal systems within a sample of 20th century White females to consider whether they provide evidence for tradeoffs within the subadult interval. In a series of individual research chapters, I consider the following: 1) how does the relative …

Ecologically Driven Changes In Subsistence Strategies: An Examination Of Bone Cross-Sectional Geometrical Properties In Hunter-Gatherers From Australia And Early Agriculturists From Belize, Ethan C. Hill

Anthropology ETDs

The primary purpose of this dissertation was to examine how changes to ecological context can urge subsistence level populations to adopt new subsistence strategies. This was accomplished by using metrics of bone strength to infer temporal behavior change in Holocene (10,000 BP – present) skeletal samples from southern Australia and southern Belize. The first paper, An Examination of the Cross-sectional Geometrical Properties of the Long Bone Diaphyses of Holocene Foragers from Roonka, South Australia, was written in collaboration with Osbjorn Pearson, Arthur Durband, Keryn Walshe, Kristian Carlson, and Frederick Grine. We compared long bone data for 69 individuals at Roonka …

Trends In Health, Stress, And Migration In The Pre-Contact Southwest United States, Alexis O'Donnell

Anthropology ETDs

The major goal of this dissertation was to examine migration and its impacts on health through use of dental morphological and paleopathological data. The case study is the Southwest United States between A.D. 1200-1400s. The second chapter, written with Corey Ragsdale, Biological Distance and the Fate of the Gallina in the American Southwest, examines where the Gallina people may have gone upon abandoning their homes in the late A.D. 1200s. We used dental data for 492 individuals and mean measure of divergence (biodistance) analysis to examine several hypotheses regarding where the Gallina went. We find that the Gallina may have …

The Structural Violence Of Maya Sacrifice: A Case Study Of Ritualized Human Sacrifice At Midnight Terror Cave, Belize, C. L. Kieffer Nail

Anthropology ETDs

The site of Midnight Terror Cave is located in the karstic Roaring Creek Valley near the village of Springfield in the Cayo District of Belize. The site was discovered in 2006 and fieldwork was conducted by the Western Belize Regional Cave Survey Project and California State University, Los Angeles, between 2008 and 2010. This dissertation focuses on the osteological analysis of the bones of 118 individuals recovered and recorded at the site. The osteological, contextual, and demographic evidence is framed within ritual and costly signaling theory of structural violence and viewed with the ethnohistoric and ethnographic literature of the ancient …

Reconstructing Landscape Use Patterns Using Strontium Isotope Ratios, Marian Irene Hamilton

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation uses modern habitats and fauna to model the variability and predictive power of strontium isotope ratios in identifying dispersal patterns in primates and habitat preference in primate and non-primate fauna. It concludes that there are significant isotopic differences between gallery forest and xeric grassland habitats in the same area and that these differences are reflected in fauna with habitat preferences for one or the other. It also identifies the most reliable methodological approaches for identifying the philopatric and dispersing sex in primate communities. Finally, it applies this methodological recommendation to strontium isotope data from South African hominins, concluding …

The Physical Anthropology Of Pottery Mound: A Pueblo Iv Site In West Central New Mexico, Russell Lowell Gordon Schorsch

Anthropology ETDs

The thesis presents the anthropometric data on 110 skeletons obtained by the University of New Mexico from Pueblo IV site of Pottery Mound. The measurements include 27 dimensions and 11 indices of the skull, face, and long bones of all or part of the 49 individuals. Observations on pathologist of the bones and teeth are also discussed. These data are compared with similar material from the Pueblo IV sites of Paako, Pecos, and Hawikuh. The Pottery Mound materials, although of a general Southwestern physical type, are somewhat divergent from other Pueblo IV groups.Several possible causes for the divergencies are postulated, …

The Big Sandy Site, Henry County, Tennessee, Douglas Osborne

Anthropology ETDs

As the large program of archaeologic exploration undertaken by the University of Tennessee and affiliated government agencies expanded it became apparent that the original system of excavating a basin completely and then, and only then, of publishing a complete report was somewhat slow and unwieldy. This is more than ever true insofar as the Kentucky Basin is concerned. When one considers that the dam at Gilbertsville, Kentuoky, will back water to the Pickwick dam some 180 miles upstream, it becomes obvious that an adequate descriptive compilation of the archaeology of such an unusual area would be most difficult. Therefore it …